							{literal}
							<style type="text/css">
							.pligg_news_title {
								border-bottom:1px dotted #ddd;
								padding: 5px 0 2px 0;
								margin:0 0 2px 0;
							}
							.pligg_news_paragraph {
								padding-bottom:5px;
								font-size:12px;
								line-height:13px;
							}
							.pligg_news_paragraph strong {
								font-weight:normal;
							}
							</style>
							{/literal}
							
							{php}
							
							require_once('../templates/admin/simplepie.inc');
							$url = 'http://www.pligg.com/rss/blog';

							function shorten($string, $length){
								// By default, an ellipsis will be appended to the end of the text.
								$suffix = '';

								// Convert 'smart' punctuation to 'dumb' punctuation, strip the HTML tags,
								// and convert all tabs and line-break characters to single spaces.
								$short_desc = trim(str_replace(array("\r","\n", "\t"), ' ', strip_tags($string)));

								// Cut the string to the requested length, and strip any extraneous spaces 
								// from the beginning and end.
								$desc = trim(substr($short_desc, 0, $length));

								// Find out what the last displayed character is in the shortened string
								$lastchar = substr($desc, -1, 1);

								// If the last character is a period, an exclamation point, or a question 
								// mark, clear out the appended text.
								if ($lastchar == '.' || $lastchar == '!' || $lastchar == '?') $suffix='';

								// Append the text.
								$desc .= $suffix;

								// Send the new description back to the page.
								return $desc;
							}

							$feed = new SimplePie();
							$feed->set_feed_url($url);
							$feed->init();

							// default starting item
							$start = 0;

							// default number of items to display. 0 = all
							$length = $this->_vars['news_count'];

							// set item link to script uri
							$link = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'];

							function trim_text($input, $length) {
								$input = strip_tags($input);
								if (iconv_strlen($input,'UTF-8') <= $length) {
									return $input;
								}
								$last_space = iconv_strrpos(iconv_substr($input, 0, $length,'UTF-8'), ' ','UTF-8');
								$trimmed_text = iconv_substr($input, 0, $last_space,'UTF-8');
								$trimmed_text .= '...';
								return $trimmed_text;
							}
							
							// loop through items
							foreach($feed->get_items($start,$length) as $key=>$item) {
								// set query string to item number
								$queryString = '?item=' . $key;

								$link = $item->get_link();
								$queryString = '';        

								// display item title and date    
								echo '<h4 class="pligg_news_title"><a href="' . $link . $queryString . '">' . shorten($item->get_title(), 55) . '</a></h4>';
								echo '<p class="pligg_news_paragraph">'.trim_text($item->get_description(), 350).'</p>';
							}

							{/php}
